AMD is close to unveiling its next-generation "Northern Islands" GPU family, which will be branded under the AMD Radeon HD 6000 series. These include two new performance-thru-extreme GPUs, namely Barts and Cayman. There's also a dual-Cayman implementation codenamed Antilles. While specifications are anyone's guess besides the little details we know about Barts and Cayman, the feature-set of the Northern Island family was communicated to AIB parts in a presentation which was leaked by the Chinese press.

To begin with, the key feature additions in Northern Islands includes a much more evolved display logic that can drive five displays simultaneously over physical outputs that include two dual-link DVI-I, one HDMI 1.4 (full-size), and two mini DisplayPort 1.2 connectors. The logic also provides you to install up to six monitors over the two DisplayPort connectors by daisy-chaining them, making use of the MultiStream feature of DP 1.2, which supports two times the data-rate of DP 1.1, and can provide very high-resolution display, or HD display with stereoscopic 3D (120 Hz). HDMI 1.4 lets you make use of Blu-ray 3D. A new video processing engine, UVD 3.0, provides GPU acceleration for MPEG-2, DivX, MVC (multi video coding), for Blu-ray 3D.

As far as performance incentives are concerned, Northern Islands does seek to add significant performance incentives over previous generations, its also comes up with a new naming scheme. Radeon HD 6800 series will be a gamer's sweet-spot performance SKU (competitive with the lower models of NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 400 series, such as GTX 460), while Radeon HD 6900 series is purely for the entusiast, competitive with the higher-end models of the GeForce GTX 400 series, such as GTX 470 and GTX 480. A new king-of-the-hill SKU that succeeds the Radeon HD 5970 is also planned.

Some micro-technical details of the Barts-based and Cayman-based SKUs were also revealed. Barts XT and Barts Pro are slated for later this month, Cayman XT and Cayman Pro for late November, just in time for the winter shopping season. New relevant details include:

Cayman XT and Pro SKUs will feature 1 GB of GDDR5 memory

Cayman XT will make use of new 6 Gb/s GDDR5 chips, likely to increase memory bandwidth by 20%; Cayman Pro will also see a 20% increase in memory bandwidth, over previous generation

Why only 1GB?? Can somebody give some logical reason? If ATI so pushing their eyefinity that means it's using high resolutions at least 5760x1080 or more and 1gb isn't enough, so why 1 gb again as in 58XX series?

Why only 1GB?? Can somebody give some logical reason? If ATI so pushing their eyefinity that means it's using high resolutions at least 5760x1080 or more and 1gb isn't enough, so why 1 gb again as in 58XX series?

Click to expand...

This is just the reference spec from AMD, board partners may well add to the memory if they feel there is a market for it, this way the reference spec price is kept lower to better compete, of course NVidia currently do it the opposite way with the 470 and 480, but NVidia is considered expensive at the top end by many enthusiasts and this may be just one reason why.

This might sound like just another conspiracy theory, but after looking at the head to head chart with AMD and Nvidia i get a disgusting feeling the two corporations are teamed up to take advantage of consumers.

Why only 1GB?? Can somebody give some logical reason? If ATI so pushing their eyefinity that means it's using high resolutions at least 5760x1080 or more and 1gb isn't enough, so why 1 gb again as in 58XX series?

Click to expand...

Just like the 5xxx cards there will be 2gb cards from various board partners but they will of corse cost more, i think this is one of the main reasons why AMD is sticking with 1gb for the reference models.
Going up to the 6 Gb/s GDDR5 chips i would assume means higher cost per chip and AMD will want to keep the cost of the reference card down.

If the cayman chips are good enough i will definatly be holding out untill the 2gb cards are out as if i go with AMD i will proberley be going for a 5760x1200 eyefinity setup.

This might sound like just another conspiracy theory, but after looking at the head to head chart with AMD and Nvidia i get a disgusting feeling the two corporations are teamed up to take advantage of consumers.

This might sound like just another conspiracy theory, but after looking at the head to head chart with AMD and Nvidia i get a disgusting feeling the two corporations are teamed up to take advantage of consumers.

Click to expand...

I think they are just trying to beat each other in each round of new hardware to make more money, they can't make massive gains over each other each time due to things like profit margins,power consumption, die size/yield so its just a constant game of beating each other by just enough each time.

Why only 1GB?? Can somebody give some logical reason? If ATI so pushing their eyefinity that means it's using high resolutions at least 5760x1080 or more and 1gb isn't enough, so why 1 gb again as in 58XX series?

Click to expand...

you guys missed this line
Cayman XT will make use of new 6 Gb/s GDDR5 chips, likely to increase memory bandwidth by 20%; Cayman Pro will also see a 20% increase in memory bandwidth, over previous generation

look these are new 20% increase memory chips that is why the 1gig so go nvidia and change the kotex......

you guys missed this line
Cayman XT will make use of new 6 Gb/s GDDR5 chips, likely to increase memory bandwidth by 20%; Cayman Pro will also see a 20% increase in memory bandwidth, over previous generation

look these are new 20% increase memory chips that is why the 1gig so go nvidia and change the kotex......

Click to expand...

Um that is talking about memory bandwidth not capacity.

It seems very odd that the 'enthusiast' level products (69xx) will only have 1GB of memory as standard. Whilst price is a factor it is still odd not to see 2GB as a standard for a card that will no doubt cost more than £350 (I don't know the USD prices).

you guys missed this line
Cayman XT will make use of new 6 Gb/s GDDR5 chips, likely to increase memory bandwidth by 20%; Cayman Pro will also see a 20% increase in memory bandwidth, over previous generation

Click to expand...

As far as i understood, bandwith means nothing if the program being used needs more memory than is provided.

I have never played a game that uses more than 1gb memory (vram), ok GTA4, but that is also badly coded ported game. But otherwise I mostly never go over 500mb vram. I use 1920x1200 res, maybe you need more with eyefinity, but I dont care about eyefinity so it doesnt matter to me.

I have never played a game that uses more than 1gb memory (vram), ok GTA4, but that is also badly coded ported game. But otherwise I mostly never go over 500mb vram. I use 1920x1200 res, maybe you need more with eyefinity, but I dont care about eyefinity so it doesnt matter to me.

Click to expand...

Really i'm sure that many games on a single 1920x1200 monitor or below won't come close to 1gb thus why there is no need to increase the cost of the reference model but anyone wanting to play at higher res/across multiple monitors will just have to wait for the board partners to make something suitable for their needs.... only problem is we don't want to wait

I would assume many games would find 1gb a limitation at 2560x1600 upto 7860x1600.